In 1558 was made the careful exploration by Bazares, who proceeded from Mexico eastward towards peninsular Florida. Two bays he named Bas Fonde and Filipina. One was Mobile, and it was probably that called Filipina. The object was settlement, and the next year Tristan de Luna occupied the country with fifteen hundred colonists and explored the interior by Nanipacna and Cosa, up to the gold region of Georgia. But it all ended only in mutiny and misfortune. There was more gold and less fighting in Mexico and South America. The Spaniards claimed regions further north more to keep others from the Gulf than to colonize what is now the United States. Soon Hawkins, Drake, and the buccaneers on the Gulf gave Spain enough to do. The French occupied the St. Lawrence, and even part of Florida. Raleigh and others led out unsuccessful English colonies. After the wreck of the Armada had destroyed Spanish prestige, the advance of the French in Canada, and of the English farther south, was more rapid. Jamestown and Plymouth were the beginning of colonies which gradually lined the Atlantic. The French took possession of the Great Lakes, and, under Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, explored the Mississippi to its mouth. The grand plan gradually took shape in the French mind of colonizing the mouth of the great river, bringing the native tribes under control, opening trade with them, discovering mines, and uniting Louisiana, as La Salle called it, with Canada by a chain of forts at strategic points. La Salle did not live to accomplish this. He was assassinated in modern Texas, after missing the mouth of the Mississippi. But a worthy successor was found after a few years in the elder Lemoyne, better known as Iberville. In 1699, he was successful in finding the mouth of the great river, but realized that its swamps offered no site for a colony. He and his brother, Bienville, explored the tributaries and the adjacent coasts, and a fort was temporarily thrown up on what is now the east side of the Back Bay of Biloxi. On Iberville’s return from France, in 1702, the permanent seat of the colony was placed at 27 Mile Bluff, on Mobile River, amid the friendly and industrious Indians. The Spaniards, who had themselves lately occupied Pensacola, vigorously remonstrated at this occupation of Florida, as they had at the building of Fort Maurepas at Biloxi. But Iberville was acting for Louis XIV., and soon had everything of value moved _via_ Massacre (now Dauphine) Island and Mobile Bay to Fort Louis de la Mobile. A town was laid out and settled. Conferences with Choctaws and Chickasaws followed, and alliances were made. The establishment of what was even then popularly called Mobile was the entrance of a new power into the Gulf country. Tonty, the old companion of La Salle, came to stay, and colonists from France were brought to the port at Dauphine Island by every ship. The shadowy Spanish claim became forgotten west of Pensacola, and the